Changing the Model

Nixon Again

“Defund the Police” – painted in bright yellow over six lanes of road. Just down the street, “Black Lives Matter” painted by the Mayor of Washington, DC .  It’s within view of the White House.  A short slogan that means what it says, but not what it sounds like.  What it doesn’t mean is abolish policing, though that’s what Trump 2020 wants you to think.  Trump himself tweeted it out:

“Sleepy Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats want to “DEFUND THE POLICE”. I want great and well paid LAW ENFORCEMENT. I want LAW & ORDER!”

It’s ironic that the President presiding over the biggest protests since the 1968 Civil Rights and Anti-War demonstrations claims that he wants “LAW AND ORDER”.  But if there is one single political truth to the Trump campaign, it is “Do what Nixon did”.  Nixon was able to tie the 1968 disruptions to the Democratic Party. With that he squeaked out a win over Hubert Humphrey.  The difference:  Humphrey was running as the Vice President to Lyndon Johnson, the President “in charge” of the nation during the upheaval.  That’s Trump’s role now.

So, what does “defund the police” actually mean?  

Lunatic Asylums

The way America handled mental health might give us a clue as to what “defunding the police” implies.  In the mid-1800’s, Dorothea Dix, a Boston schoolteacher, campaigned for better treatment for the mentally ill.  At the time, mental illness was treated as criminal, and “lunatics” where put in jail.  Dix campaigned for more compassionate care in a hospital setting, and by the time of her death, 110 psychiatric hospitals were established in the United States.  They were called “asylums;” places of safety for the mentally ill.

Reform

By 1955, over half a million Americans were in state-run psychiatric hospitals.  In 1962, “Beat Generation” author Ken Kesey drew attention to abuses in those hospitals with his book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Medical professionals began to call for community-based mental health services rather than institutionalization.  Over the next decade, the American model moved away from hospitalization.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act funding community based services. But with the election of Ronald Reagan, funding for that law was cut, and Reagan turned control of mental health over to the states. The “Reagan way” was to give the states authority and cut the money. Federal funding was slashed by thirty percent.  Most of the traditional state-run hospitals were closed.

Reagan never used the phrase “defund mental health”, but that’s effectively what he did.  He didn’t end mental health care in the United States, but he changed the entire model of care for the mentally ill.  The good news:  the large “lunatic asylums” that became warehouses for the mentally ill were closed.  The bad news:  many of those patients ended up as homeless folks on the streets.

The massive hospitals were gone, old relics deserted on a hill; their model of care (or lack of care) discarded.  The institution was altered.  And that’s what “defund the police” is calling for.  There will still be officers enforcing the law.  But what “defunding the police” demands is a radical overhaul of the American concept of “big city” policing.  

Altering Institutions

The institution of policing has suffered from many of our societal changes.  The closing of the large mental hospitals, and lack of funding for more community-based care, have put dealing with mental illness squarely on the shoulders of the police.  The dramatic increase in drug abuse in our nation, with the criminalization of more and more drugs, has also dramatically added to the police burden. They not only enforce the drug laws, but become the first-responders for drug abuse care, with life-returning drugs to reverse overdoses.

And police have taken on the task of anti-terrorism.  Police forces have militarized units, often in camouflaged gear, and with heavy-duty assault vehicles.  It’s just another task added onto the institution with little increased funding, or training, or even looking at other alternatives for achieving the goal.

All of these tasks need to be done, but the current institution of policing isn’t necessarily the best model to do them.  And like the giant mental hospital up on the hill I remember from my youth, the institutions of police forces seems unable to be changed.  In part, the unions, who often refuse to police the violations of their own members, cause this.  But there is also an “us against them” culture in many police departments that sees “the public” as the enemy, and others “in blue” as their only friends.

Slogans

Short slogans are easily misrepresented.  “Abolish ICE” from two years ago, didn’t mean let anyone who could get into the country stay here.  It called for a change in the institution, removing the “black shirted” force that seemed to act with capriciousness and terror in their enforcement of the law.  “Abolish Ice” was shorthand for either reforming the institution, or tearing it down and starting over.  

“Defund the police” doesn’t mean anarchy, much as the President wants us to think so.  It doesn’t even necessarily mean abolishing our current police departments.  But what it is demanding is that we overhaul what tasks the police are asked to do, and choose other, better ways to deal with our community problems.  Say it that way, and it’s worth looking into.